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Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Skunk Fight 2012

Well, my dog is kind of an idiot. Her name is Millie and she is hands down the nicest dog ever. She is super sweet but she's not...extremely intelligent. ;) She lets the kids hug her, pull her hair, yank her tail, feed her treats...Millie even lets their food alone until they are done eating. She's such a lover, always wants to be held and give kisses. (Yes, I know that's annoying at times. Just push her down. ;))

Cute right? But like I said...not very smart.

Millie has been sprayed by a skunk twice now. In our fenced in back yard. Ugh.

Thursday, she got sprayed around 10 pm, right in front of our air conditioner. Within 30 seconds, our entire house smelled of skunk. Our house is pretty tiny (I should really do a house tour!) and one large window air conditioner easily cools our kitchen, dining and living areas. So that means...you guessed it. All of those areas? Major skunk smell. It actually made me nauseous it was so strong. I'm convinced I burned my nose from it. ;) Poor Dave had to wash Millie and then spent a good 30 minutes outside hosing everything down.

I stayed inside, lighting every candle I could find and putting the strongest scent I had in my Scentsy. Like 5 bricks at once. (I used Cinammon Spice. It was great!) I emptied two cans of Febreeze Odor Eliminator Spray, a bunch of normal fabric Febreeze, I even sprayed Dr. Scholls foot deodorant all over (which I'm convinced helped!!). We ended up in bed around midnight, hoping and praying it would smell better in the morning.

It did. And then it didn't. Dave and Trace headed to Lowe's and picked up my new best friend.

It wasn't cheap, but not super expensive either. To be honest, we didn't really care. We would have paid a hundred bucks to get the smell OUT. Zorbx came in this great multi pack. A tiny bottle which we are saving for shoes, a normal sized spray bottle and a big bottle of refill. We bought 2 multipacks and it was well worth it.

We used the Zorbx spray on everything and in the air. We got the unscented. It was safe around kids and pets, which clearly is important to us. We sprayed the air, the carpets, the couches, the counters, the doors...I may have sprayed myself too. (Kidding! :)) It really worked. We sprayed everything a few times over the weekend and bam! No skunk smell left!

I called a carpet cleaning service to come in today to clean the carpets, which needed done anyways, thinking it'd get the last of the smell out. The nice men who showed up to do it both said if I hadn't told them on the phone we had a skunk smell, they'd have no clue. THANK YOU ZORBX. :)

I actually ended up having my first asthma attack in a good three years because the skunk scent was so strong. It was pretty awful for a while but now we're good. :)

Okay. I'm officially a skunk smell expert now. Twice in a year makes one pretty smart at it. Here's my steps to help...

1. SHUT OFF THE AIR CONDITIONER. Immediately. We shut ours off within 2 minutes and it still got everywhere.

2. Before you turn your ac back on, wash the filters and covers really well.

3. Open every window and door. Turn on lots of fans to get the air ciculating.

4. Pick one scent to cover up the skunk smell. We did cinammon spice because it was strong but pleasant. All the candles and Scentsy I used had a cinnamony scent. Too many scents made things worse.

5. Go to Lowes. Get Zorbx. And lots of it! Apply liberally and often.

6. If you have one or can borrow one, run a dehumidifer. With all the sprays and scents going on in our house, our air got so thick and gross. Running the dehumidifer we usually have in our basement was a GREAT help.

Really though...just avoid skunks all together. It kinda really was a pain! ;)

2 comments:

Earlier this summer we had a family of skunks surrounding my house. 8 of them! Luckily none of my dogs got sprayed, but Oscar DID roll around in an area where one of the skunks has sprayed. It didn't smell pleasant! I'm so glad you told me about Zorbx, I'm mentally filing that away from a later date. I have a sneaking suspicion that info will come in handy.